A life after death
prayerfully sought in churches —
Mushrooms in tree stumps

The tyrant built his tower tall,
set straight to work a-cutting through
the golden threads that join us all
to hoard them in his mental zoo.

Its bricks were baked of stolen clay
in his kleptocratic kilns’ cracked moulds.
Their stench of sulfurous yellow stays
as mockery of our cords of gold.

He covets the gleaming ties we share
to gild the cavern in his tower.
The pit that’s fed with his charm’s snares
cannot be sated with this gold of ours.

His true name is as it ever stayed,
be it Xerxes, or Julius, or Wilhelm, or Don,
this ******* hybrid of hubris and hate,
who feeds on sycophantic fawns.

But despots have their own red thread,
a truth of iron wrought long before:
Each one will end encased in lead,
entombed beneath time’s deepening ****.

The tower topples, his memory fades.
He takes his place with Hades’ shades.

What lies beyond this dour door
that leads to things ahead?
I stand and wonder what’s in store
behind this portal grimy with dread.

Its glass is cracked, its lead paint is chipped
while its brick wall is turning to sand.
Its handle doesn’t invite to be gripped,
nor does it tell me where I’ll land.

I look all up and down the street
and see only more doors that look the same.
Before each one are more: their feet
wish to walk away from these doorframes.

Each one of us is seized by impotent rage
at facing a choice that’s no choice,
to be fixed as if in a steel cage
and finding no cause to rejoice.

But one of us in this bleak boulevard
must be the first to twist the ****
with the will to face the path that’s hard,
to not let our lives by fear be robbed.

Let each of us kick in our doors of fate
and overthrow their grips on our lives,
smash the clock and pass through that gate
with heads held high, fearless of where we arrive.

Spurred by the clarion call: it came to pass
our pent up waters burst the dams.
No captives are we! We struck en masse:
Battering rams forged out of lambs.

The last rose petals fall to the ground
leaving the rosehips bare
as autumn’s chill again comes around
to strip blooms that had been fair.
The rosehips have hairs all wiry and grey
that also break off, one by one.
Her color is gone, she fades away
until this rose lady’s season is done.
Her petals arrayed on frosty soil
decay gently in the cold rain
while in her hips, seeds are born
to bring forth new roses again.

Candle, candle, burning bright
in this vast and dusky church tonight.
In its shimmering light I see
few fellow faithful kneel near to me.
Our chant is soft and barely heard
above this fallen world’s absurd
descent into a tyrant’s wrath.
Like those before, await his aftermath.
Therefore we must keep this flame alive
so that hope and charity still survive
‘til the fickle follies of sundown times
end again and new dawn shines.

What happened to the little boy
that I once knew so well?
He’d greet each new day with unfettered joy
and wave the last one farewell.

When oaks and maples began to turn
and the leaves had started to fall
the boy happily switched the TV on and yearned
for the return of his game of football.

Somewhere along this growing boy’s way
he became a great deal like me:
I wake and walk to the mirror today
to see where that boy used to be.

Now I cling to every last leaf
that falls from the branches up high
while stretching the days that are now too brief
as the winter comes rapidly nigh.

A frail man stood high on a granite precipice
as rain lashed harshly his wrinkled brow.
His dead eyes stared fixed into the abyss
while the deep clouds held an intemperate row.

The powdery embers of his belly’s red fire
had dimmed to flecks of faintest off white.
But now, not far from where this had transpired
shone out a tall lighthouse streaming bright.

And in its arc light’s blazing blue beams
the haggard man saw past his mind’s edge
to see he wasn’t the only in a feverish dream:
Multitudes stood each on a dark stony ledge.

Just then the others saw too through the gloom
that they were surrounded in this bracken dell
by bleak fellow travelers of similar doom:
They shared in their bones that they all were unwell.

This newfound chorus sang their litanies all
in crescendos of crisis and depths they bewailed
but the more that joined in, the music recalled
how by sharing their song they’d over darkness prevail.

There in the bellies of each in the throng
once cold embers began to kindle a spell:
This company of the crushed composed a new song
whose magic this sympathy symphony cast well.